Governor Pat McCrory Is Hiding The Truth About Fracking

Water and natural landscapes are the epicenter of North Carolina’s booming tourism and recreation economy. In 2013, domestic tourists spent a record $20.2 billion in the state, up from $19.4 billion in 2012.

If North Carolina’s proposed regulations are implemented, some of the state’s most visited areas will be industrialized and public health may be compromised. According to Carolina Public Press, companies may start conducting tests for fracking in Western North Carolina as soon as September.

After ten years of slickwater, horizontal, hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in Pennsylvania, where tourism is also a major economy, a lot of lessons have been learned at a price the public and elected leaders are just now beginning to understand.

Triple Divide recently finished a five-screening tour through North Carolina as part of a national tour to states where frackingis being proposed thanks to Investigative News Network and Knight Foundation (no newspapers published press releases sent to them about the screenings either).

The proposed Carolina regulations also allow for state preemption of local laws that attempt to limit or outright prohibit fracking within a community. A similar law was passed in Pennsylvania, but was declared “unconstitutional” in the state Supreme Court. Already, counties and towns in North Carolina are passing local laws banning fracking anyway, in defiance of the state and in honor of a community’s right to self-govern. Carolina’s proposed regulations outline an undemocratic approach to land management, opting for “big government” control over communities’ interests.
In North Carolina, legislators have the opportunity to investigate the data on water contamination and other impacts to land, property, and life in Pennsylvania. Article Continues…

Fracking Disclosures Erased From Website, Group Says
“Companies that inject diesel without permits should be fined for ignoring the law,” Mary Greene, the group’s managing attorney who wrote the report, said in a statement. “The public deserves more disclosure and transparency about the toxic chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing.”

Hormone-disrupting activity of fracking chemicals worse than initially found
“Among the chemicals that the fracking industry has reported using most often, all 24 that we have tested block the activity of one or more important hormone receptors,” said the study’s presenting author, Christopher Kassotis, a PhD student at the University of Missouri, Columbia. “The high levels of hormone disruption by endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) that we measured, have been associated with many poor health outcomes, such as infertility, cancer and birth defects.”

Will the Tea Party Impeach Governor Pat McCrory
Surprisingly, the Tea Party and legislative Republicans don’t seem in the slightest fazed by the Governor’s assertion of executive muscle—there’s not a single searchable peep expressing concern over McCrory’s announcement that he would act even if his legislature did not.